Christie's December Old Masters evening made £12.7 million on King Street, led by Gerrit Dou's The Flute Player at £3.8 million.
Gerrit Dou’s The Flute Player led Christie’s Old Masters evening at Christie’s King Street in St James’s on Tuesday 2 December 2025. The sale made £12.7 million.
Christie’s has held its London sales at King Street since 1823. The December evening followed the July Old Masters sale there, which made £55.2 million.
Dou, born in Leiden in 1613, was Rembrandt’s first pupil and went on to lead the Leiden fijnschilders, the fine painters known for small, polished panels. The Flute Player, the only guaranteed lot, sold for £3.8 million against an estimate of £2 million to £3 million.
Two lots were withdrawn before the sale. Of the 31 offered, 67 per cent sold and 11 exceeded their high estimates.
A marine by Richard Parkes Bonington, who died in 1828 aged 25, sold for £889,000 against an estimate of £400,000 to £600,000. The French court painter and playwright Charles-Antoine Coypel made £482,600. William Hodges, who worked in India in the early 1780s, sold a group of musicians playing the sarangi, tambura and tablas for nearly five times its low estimate.